The Naked Egg Experiment!

The Bouncing Naked Egg Experiment

*This post first appeared on our former blog on Feb. 12, 2013

I kept seeing pins on Pinterest about bouncing eggs and naked eggs and eventually, curiosity got the best of me and I had to see what this bouncing naked egg business was all about. It was the perfect excuse for me to play and for us to mark it down as a science experiment. The truth is, I like learning in homeschool just as much as the kids ;)

Should you want to make your own bouncing naked egg (that's should be fun for Google searches. ha!), you can find the instructions at Imagination Station 

 The process is really easy. All you do is take an egg and drop it in a cup of white vinegar.  We let ours soak for a whole day. Sure the house smelled kind of weird after leaving a cup of vinegar out for 24 hours but I'll take the smell in exchange for a cool science experiment.  No need to stir your egg as it will actually rotate on it's own as the shell starts to disintegrate, at least that's what happened to ours. We did gently poke at it a few times during the de-shelling process to see what the shell felt like. The vinegar broke it down to a soft foamy consistency until evenutally, the shell pretty much disappeared. When we pulled it out, we gently rubbed any foam still left on the egg until it was a nice and swirly looking. You can see a lot of the yolk in ours. I wonder if that's because we soaked it for a whole day? Next time we'll try it for less time and see what the yolk does.

It really does bounce! Now I wouldn't go dropping it from a second story or anything crazy like that. 

We decided to go a bit farther and see what would happen if we let our egg sit another 24 hours but this time in blue water. Osmosis!

 You guessed it! A blue egg!

Our naked egg hung around a good five days before it started to lose it's bounce. It never did get stinky or bust but it did harden until we were left with this sad little sack.

That's what I call an "egg-ceptional" experiment.